Mark your calendars! Upcoming: Day of the Girl and Men’s Day

October 11^th is internationally celebrated as Día de la Niña (known in English as Day of the Girl or Day of the Girl Child) to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world. It’s only 4 weeks away! Here are some ideas for celebrating in your site…

• Host a movie night with films like Girl Rising or other local variations that show the challenges girls face and their potential to contribute to their communities. (click here for our post on gender consciousmovie nights)
• Perform plays and sing songs about the importance of girls' education at primary schools
• Do a poster contests depicting girls’ life goals or women’s role in work or society
• Hold a sports tournament for girls—volleyball, soccer and kickball are all huge hits.
• Organize mentoring activities for girls, such as Take Our Daughters to Work
• Have a parade, feria or other public event with local women’s groups
• Discuss how gender norms affect the classroom with teachers in your town (more info on this to come!)

Camp GLOW Follow-Up Projects!

The camp itself was a huge success and a fun opportunity for the girls, Volunteers and Nicaraguan organizations that participated. Motivated girls were given a chance to work with volunteers in their community to do a follow-up project. There were 22 girls who ended up taking part in a project, which is huge considering that there were just over 60 campers! We thought we'd talk a bit about what each girl did, as it's an accomplishment worth recognizing.

Nicaragua wins award for Fatherhood Campaign

La Red de Masculinidad por la Igualdad de Género (REDMAS), a coalition of over 20 organizations in Nicaragua working on masculinity and gender issues with boys and men, is reponsible for the popular “Que tuani no ser machista” and “Ganale a las ganas” campaigns. REDMAS also coordinates MenCare Nicaragua, which launched a “Vos sos mi papa” campaign that recently placed as a finalist in the 2014 Avon Communications Awards.

The Campaña de Paternidad, or Fatherhood Campaign, included posters, handouts, t-shirts and even baseball caps with messages encouraging men to be involved in parenting their children in a way that shows respectful and non-violent relationships between men and women.

Here’s one of the posters from the campaign:

Check out Men-Care.org for more information about the campaign, including 2 short videos about being male in Nicaragua. 

Also check out the REDMAS website for other campaigns and information about who they work with. 

Gender Conscious Movie Night

We’re all aware of how gender stereotypes in movies and TV shows can negatively affect our perceptions of ourselves or others; however, watching movies is a fun activity to do with kids, women, men, your host family, or other community members. Many schools use movie nights as a way to collect money for a specific purpose or event—charging one or two córdobas as an entrance fee and hosting it at school once classes are over.

In this post we’ll discuss two ideas for making movie nights a little more gender conscious: (1) including a gender checklist while watching any movie or (2) showing a gender-equality themed movie or documentary like Girl Rising or Half the Sky.

When the tables are turned...

The short video "Oppressed Majority" (click here for link) does a great job of showing what many daily experiences for women might look like if it were men in their shoes instead.

The director  Eléonore Pourriat actually made the film five years ago in France, but only recently did it receive intense internet attention. As written in an article on the Guardian Women's blog, "Pourriat realised that the film had gone viral only when she started seeing activity on Facebook. Her YouTube mailbox filled up, but the messages were so aggressive she deleted them. "I kept one though because really, you can't believe it. Someone said: 'More patronising feminist bullshit. Keep whining, bitches!' When I read that, I was more convinced than ever that I have to continue to make films." She is already working on her next project – a mockumentary about the removal of pubic hair. 

Dia contra la violencia hacia las mujeres

This past week, on November 25^th, Nicaragua celebrated the Día Internacional para la Eliminación de la Violencia hacia las Mujeres with marches, radio reports, and other events across the county. El Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres (MAM), which brings together all the feminists organizations in Nicaragua, led the march in Managua that not only spoke out against violence against women, but also against the recently proposed constitutional reforms.